Hallowed Be Thy Name Read online

The plastic zip tie dug into Parker’s wrists, beginning to really hurt. What he most disliked, however, was the hood over his head. He hated not being able to see where he was, who was around him, where they were going. It was as he’d heard Bubba’s mom say many times: When it rains, it pours . . . .

  He had an idea.

  He tried to open his mouth, but the tape pulled against his lips. He tried again, wincing as the tape stretched his skin until he thought it would rip. That wasn’t going to work.

  He had another idea. A few years ago he’d heard about a contest at an amusement park on the west coast in which fifty people rode a roller coaster non-stop, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, stopping only once every few hours for bathroom breaks. They ate and slept while riding. Three weeks later, the last person riding the coaster was a housewife from Kansas City. She won a brand new Marauder pickup truck donated by Cherrolet. She got her picture taken with Ford Cherrolet and everything, as he was still alive then. Parker and Bubba saw the story and photo in The American. Bubba’s dad said the lady looked ridiculous sitting behind the steering wheel of her big, para-military four-by-four truck. Her feet barely reached the pedals. Parker had wished he could enter such a contest. He loved roller coasters and could last a lot longer than three lousy weeks if it meant winning a shiny new Marauder and getting his picture in The American.

  Parker never had been susceptible to motion sickness of any kind. In fact, he’d decided he must be immune to it. Nevertheless, he began making barfing sounds, gagging and retching, laying it on thick. He was quite accomplished at such noises, after all. He and Bubba had once mixed cream corn, clam chowder, Parmesan cheese, and vinegar in a plastic freezer bag, and Bubba hid the bag under his shirt as they paid their way into a movie theater. Halfway through the film, they sneaked up to the closed balcony and Parker began making retching noises. On Parker’s third heave, Bubba took the bag, warmed now by his body heat, and dumped the sour, chunky contents over the balcony railing and onto the audience below. Many of the people started getting sick, throwing up on each other. In mere moments, the entire screaming, hysterical theater cleared out. Parker and Bubba both smeared some of the remaining concoction on themselves. Bubba stuffed the empty bag into his pants and they hurried downstairs, where they blended in with the fleeing crowd. The panicked theater manager apologized profusely and refunded everyone’s cost of admission. Parker had wanted to do it again the next week in a different movie theater, but Bubba had had dreams about their stunt, nightmares in which he was the one who had been barfed on. He subsequently talked Parker out of an encore performance.

  On the fourth big heave, the hood was suddenly removed. The tape was ripped from his mouth.

  “Jim!” exclaimed the driver.

  “Relax, Jack,” said the man in the front passenger seat, who apparently was named Jim. “He doesn’t know how we got down here.”

  “He’ll see our faces,” said Jack from the driver’s seat, adjusting the rear-view mirror so it pointed almost straight up.

  “He was going to see us eventually, anyway,” Jim added.

  “But General Ramsey said—”

  “General Ramsey said to go easy on the kid,” interrupted Jim. “If he gets there and he has puke all over himself and has to go to bed for twelve hours, Ramsey’ll have us back on sanitation before the kid’s lunch even has time to dry on the seats. Not to mention the possibility of him choking to death on his own lunch because of the tape you slapped over his mouth.”

  Jack said nothing. He crossed his arms and stared out the window.

  “You gonna vomit?” said Jim.

  “Yeah,” Parker lied. He tried to sound pathetic.

  It was then Parker realized Jack wasn’t driving. His hands weren’t even on the steering wheel. Parker found he was lying across the bench seat in some sort of SUV. The two men up front wore the same dark suits as the men in Sky City Hobbies and Toys, though he hadn’t seen who had grabbed him. It was too dark in the vehicle to see their faces. Despite the darkness, however, both men still wore their bug-eyed sunglasses.

  “Why don’t you sit up so you can look out,” said Jim, “that’s what I do when I feel sick.” Parker wriggled into an upright position. “But don’t try anything.” Jim held up a shiny object and made a series of flicks and twists with his wrist. The object opened and a sharp, pointed silver blade whipped out. Parker recognized it as a butterfly knife. Gary Gray, a kid who lived on one-eighty-six, had smuggled a similar knife back from Mexico after vacationing there with his parents and sister. He showed the knife to everyone one day after school. He tried to fling it open and almost cut off his finger. His mom threw the knife in the garbage once she’d returned him home stitched and bandaged from the hospital. Gary said that later that night he searched one-handed through the garbage for the knife but found only greasy chicken bones and old meatloaf. Watching Jim fling open his knife, however, made it abundantly clear he knew how to use it.

  “Relax, kid,” said Jim, “I’m just messin’ with ya. Turn around.”

  Parker slowly slid to the edge of the seat and turned his back. He felt Jim seize his wrist and a moment later his hands came free. He faced front in time to see Jim pull the blade through the tie around his ankles as well, then whip the knife shut, tossing the zip ties on the floorboard.

  “You’ll have to forgive Jack for putting those on a bit tight,” said Jim, “he just wants to be extra thorough. This is our first real assignment in nine months. We can’t afford to blow it.”

  “And yet you’ve removed the target’s visual obstruction and its restraints,” said Jack, arms still folded across his body.

  Parker noticed Jack’s use of generic pronouns and felt oddly offended, trivialized, even if he were unsure how to articulate it. He wasn’t the only one, as Jim said with much sarcasm, “The target can’t see anyway because he is a half-mile underground in a hyper-rail tunnel. Restraints aren’t needed because he ain’t gonna try any funny business because he’s a smart kid with nowhere to go. Isn’t that right?” Jim fixed Parker with the same look he got from his Physical Education teacher, Mr. Brown, when he refused to shower after gym class.

  “Uh, yeah, sure,” said Parker, not at all sure what he was agreeing to. But, as Mr. Brown often said, compliance was more important than comprehension. Parker hated that expression, hated being told what to do.

  “Try looking out the window, like I said,” said Jim. “If you’re gonna throw up, let me know. I’ll put the window down. I’d rather hose down the car than scrape off the seats.”

  “Uh, I’m not really,” stammered Parker, “I mean, I don’t actually feel . . . .”

  “See!” said Jack, “he was faking it to get that hood off. He wanted to see what was going on, who we were.”

  “Course he did,” said Jim. “Clever. Sit back and enjoy the ride, kid. We’ll be there in no time.”

  “Be where?” asked Parker.

  “You’ll see,” replied Jim.

  “Who’s General Ramsey?” asked Parker.

  “You’ll see,” Jim said again. A hint of a smile formed on Jack’s lips. He, for one, was clearly enjoying this.

  “Are you guys cops?” Parker asked.

  “Nope,” said Jim.

  “C.I.A.?”

  “Nope.”

  “Am I being kidnapped?” asked Parker.

  “Kidnapping!” Jim turned to face Parker. “Is that what you think this is?” He waited for Parker to respond.

  “Well, the way you grabbed me back at the toy store,” replied Parker, “and the hood and restraints, and tossing me in here like you did . . . .”

  “That was just ’cause we were in a hurry,” said Jim. “Nah, this ain’t no kidnapping. Think of this as recruitment. Or an audition. But more like a job offer. But one you can’t refuse.”

  “What happens if I refuse?”

  “You go back to your boring ol’ life,” said Jack. “Lame parties, uptight girls, cheap booze, cheap drugs, rehab. Then more p
arties, more girls, more booze, more drugs, more rehab.”

  “Jack!” said Jim, “he’s only thirteen.”

  “And I’m a divorced part-time sanitation engineer,” said Jack. “What’s your point?”

  “My point,” said Jim under his breath as he leaned closer to Jack, “is that maybe if you’d laid off all those things, you’d still be a happily-married part-time sanitation engineer.”

  Parker listened intently and wondered if all non-C.I.A., pseudo-kidnappers were divorced and wore their sunglasses in the dark. He looked out the window for the first time and saw how big the tunnel was. A row of red lights glowed on the roof of the tunnel, filling it with eerie red light. He remembered Bubba’s dad telling them red light was used on submarines because it provided minimal yet adequate lighting and required no time for low-light adaptation by the human eye.

  “Try these,” said Jim, offering his sunglasses. “Go on.” Jim dangled the glasses.

  Parker put them on. Suddenly he could see everything as though it were an unusually colorful photograph. “Wow.”

  “Cool, huh?” said Jim, facing front again.

  Outside, Parker saw the enormous tunnel in much greater detail. A set of railroad tracks ran parallel on the opposite side of the tunnel. He could see their SUV was inside some other vehicle, most likely a train. And a very high-speed one, judging by the blurring passage of the railroad ties. He looked all around, even turning to look behind them.

  His heart nearly jumped out of his chest.

  Behind them was a second SUV. Two men were inside it, though their heads were back, mouths open, fast asleep. Neither of them wore their sunglasses. What was remarkable, however, was that on the roof of the SUV were three distinct figures. Two of them looked familiar, though it couldn’t possibly be. He pulled off the sunglasses and looked, though in the darkness he saw nothing, not even the sleeping men, and he quickly put the glasses back on. He looked closer. Could it be? Could it really be . . . Bubba? Parker kept watching and gradually recognized Sunny. It was hard to believe, but clearly the third figure was Colby Max, asleep. Parker looked even harder still, positive it was them yet grasping frantically at how all three of them came to be riding on the roof of an SUV, parked inside a speeding bullet train rushing to God-Knows-Where in a massive tunnel deep underground.

  “See anything interesting?”

  Parker spun around to find Jim smiling at him.

  “Uh, yeah,” said Parker, “those two guys behind us are both passed-out.”

  “Neal and Bob,” offered Jim, “both short-timers, ready to retire and start collecting their pensions. They’ve been around awhile and seen it all, so they don’t get too excited about a little train ride, even if it takes them more than half-way across the country in under three hours.”

  Parker’s eyes must have widened, as Jim raised his eyebrows and said, “Cool, huh?”

  “Yeah,” said Parker. “Could I wear your glasses a little while longer?”

  “Sure,” said Jim. “But I want ’em back when we get there.”

  “Where?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Parker twisted around in his seat, pretending to examine every inch of murky darkness he could find. He sneaked looks backward at his friends perched precariously atop the SUV.

  What’s next? he thought to himself.

  Talk about a bizarre birthday.

  Parker tried to calm himself. He tried not to think too much. His mother had always said it was a sin to worry, because worrying wouldn’t change anything. Nevertheless, he knew in his gut that when they reached their ultimate destination, he would face something the likes of which he could never have imagined. The knot in his stomach pulled itself even tighter.

  Chapter 5

  Blowing Chunks